posted
So yeah my mother called me just to rub it in...grumble...
But yeah Congrats to Obama. He ran a good campaign. Of course none of this matters if he loses in November. I'm hoping he wins big, I don't think I can take another close call.
Posts: 796 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Before Obama gave his speech, there was a little moment when he and Michelle knocked knuckles and gave each other thumbs up. It was cute and funny. I wonder if anyone else noticed...
Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
CNN is reporting that Clinton will drop out by the end of the week. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying the race is officially over.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Nah, estimates are estimates. There are 3409&1/2 pledged-delegates to be bound through the DemocraticPresidentialPrimary process For a clear victory in the primary caucuses and elections, 1705 pledged-delegates must be bound to a specific candidate. As of today, there are 1684&1/2 pledged-delegates bound to Obama. ie Obama needs 20&1/2 more pledged-delegates to obtain a clear victory. So Clinton cannot have lost the Primary contest until June6th/7th when the TexasStateConvention decides how their remaining 67 pledged-delegates will be bound.
And most superdelegates can change their minds up through the last Nominating ballot at the DemocraticNationalConvention.
posted
Not only the superdelegates can change their minds, but also the so-called pledged delegates, according to the rules of the Democratic Party, are not legally bound to vote the way the primaries went. Every single delegate could change his mind, even on the first ballot in the convention. There will be nothing to take for granted when the votes are taken in the Dem convention.
The Dems have shot themselves in the foot so many times during this primary campaign, they have no feet left. The convention should be convened with everyone in wheelchairs.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Maybe a young senator will speak at the convention and unify the party solidly around Obama.
Of course 4 years ago that might have been Obama with a time machine creating a time paradox that somehow allowed him to create the environment necessary for his becoming president.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Montana is an interesting final note on the primary election season. Montana held the republican primary in Feb. when there were still half a dozen candidates in the running but held their democratic primary this week.
Only 1628 people voted in Montana's republican primary last february or 0.25% of the registered voters. Which is very low even for primary elections. This week 181,423 Montanan's voted in the democratic primary (28% of the registered voters). And this is in a purported "red state".
Over one hundred times as many people came out to vote in the democratic primary this week as voted in the republican primary in february and Obama won by a 16% margin.
I'm not exactly sure what that means for the general election but I think its clearly an indicator that the long drawn out primary process attracted a lot of attention and motivated many people to participate in the primary.
It may mean that the hard fought democratic primary will turn out to be a boon for Obama rather than the shot in the foot so many republicans have been hoping for.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I hadn't checked here in a bit and was surprised to see that Clinton's delay in conceding - or giving the slightest indication that she actually knew Obama was the nominee - hadn't been discussed.
From news reports, it sounds like she was inclined to let this all hang out even longer, but yesterday, Rep. Charlie Rangel and a bunch of other members of the House did an intervention on her.
Rangel - a loyal Clinton supporter - was *not* happy with her introduction on Tuesday night as "the next president of the United States."
I don't use the term "intervention" lightly, this was a blunt talk by concerned friends telling her she was harming her own career and the prospects of her own party.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I am surprised to hear that her chief advisor introduced her Tuesday night as "The next President of the United States."
There is absolutely no way Obama could pick her for VP now, even if he wanted to. It would look like he was bullied into it.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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"I'm not sure where you got your figures, but the News Hour site had it different."
NewsHour's total includes their estimated split of 124 pledged-delegates by the yet-to-occur Texas, Idaho, Iowa, Washington, and Nebraska state conventions. One hardly calls the SuperBowl based on what the sports writers predict will occur.
posted
I've heard similar things. I think she's playing hardball. I think she's not freely joining hands because she wants the threat sitting out there that she'll challenge him in August if he doesn't pick her to run with him. And I think that, given the response of her fellow Democrats, people are NOT responding well to her behavior.
Rabbit -
According to Pooka's link, it's like 177,000 to 93,000. But the Republican election on MT was a caucus, which always brings lower results.
Looking at CNN's results, I think I see where the disconnect might be. Is this where you got your numbers? You get the 181K number you mentioned there, and then a really low number for Republicans, 1628. But that 1628 isn't the number of people who voted, it's the number of state delegates that each candidate earned based on the votes from each caucus site. I think pooka's link shows the sum total of the caucus goers who voted for those delegates. So it looks like more of a two to one ratio.
You want a more interesting number? In the 2004 Presidential election between George Bush and John Kerry, 439,773 votes were cast for the two candidates. 173,710 of those were for Kerry, and 266,063 for Bush. More Democratic votes were cast in the 2008 Primary than in the 2004 General Election for Kerry.
Is Montana a battleground state in 2008? Meh. They did elect a Democrat to the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. About 400,000 votes were cast in that elections, and Tester won by 3,000 votes, and though he ousted a three term Republican senator, the guy was in the midst of a scandal. Could they go blue? Yes, it's possible. Given Obama's grass roots way of bringing out voters and spreading his message, states that in previous contests weren't given a lot of money or attention are going to get a lot of attention, even if it isn't from the Obama high command. Besides, he's going to have a huge war chest to contest states that usually Democrats can't afford to contest.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Obama tells everyone to settle down about the VP choice. Some really nice stuff in there about taking time to research and make the right choice, not pick under pressure.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I saw a very small part of the daily show today--I think it was a repeat from last night. They were showing clips of a Clinton rally/get-together with a bunch of Clinton supporters. There was a guy there ranting about how he would vote for McCain if they "STOLE" the nomination from Clinton.
I don't get it. Are there really Clinton supporters who think that Obama stole the nomination? How do they justify that in their minds? They might not like the way the delegates are proportioned but the rules were in place well before this primary. It's not like Obama or his people changed the rules so they could get more votes.
Is this about Michigan? Seems it's okay to support rule breaking if it's in your favor...
Posts: 2880 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I don't know... For some people, it seems to border on psychosis.
I just really can't imagine voting for an opponent who is the opposite of my candidate on dozens of issues more or less out of spite...
For some people, it has to be about hating women, or breaking the rules, or Hillary Clinton somehow being Ordained From On High, or something... It can't be about, say, getting more of the delegate vote.
Heh. Then again, this may be as close as I ever get to understanding how some members of the GOP feel about the 2000 election.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
If you've seen a lot of Hillary's speeches, there's always this one guy in the background, he must be a staffer. Whenever she talks about Obama, he always gets this look on his face like he just ate a really sour lemon or a bad prune or something, and whenever she talks about herself, he looks like he's walking past the gates to get into Disneyworld. Whenever she says to go to Hillaryclinton.com, he always shouts it out with her and smiles like they're talking about an old friend. It's hard to describe, but he's always there in the background, usually on the right, with black rimmed glasses.
Just based on his reactions and body language, he comes off like an acolyte, a true believer. I'm starting to wonder if this guy is her campaign manager.
Seeing that guy makes me wonder how many of her supporters are that invested in her and her campaign that they can't let go, and are so personally insulted by their candidate losing that they'd support the antithesis to their candidate's policies just to spite the guy who beat her, even if they don't actually agree with those same policies.
But I don't think that's the case. Already a lot of her supporters are confused by what's happening. Her Congressional allies are jumping ship to unite behind Obama. Her own staffers are starting to do the same, saying that they had a great run, but now they don't agree with what she is doing. Only the diehards are sticking to her. I think in five months, the people who were never going to vote for McCain regardless will have made up their minds to stay home or vote for Obama, but those that REALLY supported Clinton's positions are not going to flock to McCain in large numbers.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Ouch. Looks like the McCain gaffe machine is up and running. I knew from the beginning that his gaffes were going to be a big problem for him, not just because the media would harp on them but because they give Obama plenty of fodder to use to undercut whatever message McCain is trying to play. What really sucks for McCain too, is that his blunders can be spun by Obama without it looking like negative politics. Gaffes and blunders like that, where you constantly make false statements and refuse to correct yourself are fair game. I think some gaffes or simple misspeakings should be let go, but not something substantively policy oriented, or when speaking in contradiction to a vote made (which is why so few Senators ever get this far).
The harsh route would be to say that McCain is old and feeble and is either lying or fudging the facts because he just can't remember. But Obama won't go that way, he'll calmly and methodically pick apart everything McCain says, which will be particularly damaging when they get into these moderatorless townhalls that McCain is looking forward to so much. Obama is going to throw every gaffe back in his face and force him to reconcile those gaffes with his whole "experienced leadership" mantra. And it's going to hurt him.
Oh btw, if you watch the Dailyshow clip of the Clinton speech, the guy I was talking about is behind her to the right with glasses and a brown shirt. He moves in and out of camera shot. I haven't seen or read the McCain speech, but every review of it I've read said it was horrible.
Nato - You might want to crosspost that in the General Election thread.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Mmm, and they managed to find three black people to seat immediately behind Hillary Clinton. Subtle.
Oh, McCain. That laugh... That laugh is not charming. That laugh sounds like it belongs on a rocking chair on a porch.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I was talking to my grandmother about the race. She is of the opinion that it's Clinton's turn to run - Obama should have gotten out of the way and waited his turn. I get the feeling she thinks he "stole" the election merely by showing up. It's not a sentiment I share, but it makes me wonder how many of Clinton's supporters feel the same way.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:I was talking to my grandmother about the race. She is of the opinion that it's Clinton's turn to run - Obama should have gotten out of the way and waited his turn. I get the feeling she thinks he "stole" the election merely by showing up. It's not a sentiment I share, but it makes me wonder how many of Clinton's supporters feel the same way.
I remember a letter to the editor in Time Magazine three weeks ago where a woman claimed that though she was angry at Obama for not waiting his turn, she thought that the Democrats would and should support Obama, even if they were voting for Clinton.
The worst thing about Senator Clinton's campaign with regards to Obama is that she ran as a front-runner, as an inevitable candidate who could not be challenged, and yet, there was Obama. Many of Senator Clinton's supporters bought into that inevitability and feel that Obama stole the election simply by showing up and not waiting his turn, and of course, the most dangerous thing in politics is battling a sense of entitlement that I am certain pervades the Clinton Campaign.
Posts: 457 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
We may, God willing, elect a black man to be president of the United States this year. How many more years must pass before we give up on the idea of political dynasties in a system that allegedly has elements of democracy?
"Wait his turn..." You would think America was a gameboard that belonged to a select few.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I agree with the letter writer to Time. The vast majority of Clinton supporters will go and vote for Obama come November, once the sting has worn off.
For my grandparents, it has more to do with age and experience than dynasties or elitism. They're also Japanese though, and the whole "wait your turn" thing is a big cultural value, so they may not be representative of the US voting population.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
A LOT of people feel that it was Clinton's turn.
Then again, a lot of people are pretty pissed that she didn't run in 2004 when the Democrats got stuck with Kerry. You could say that that was her turn, and she should have run then. I think she would've beaten Kerry and Dean, though maybe not Edwards. It's possible that we might have had a Clinton/Edwards ticket of some kind. And it very well may have beaten Bush, who I think largely won based on Kerry's inadequacies as a candidate.
So you could say that, if there is such a thing as "turns," she missed hers four years ago. And if this was her turn, she ruined it by expecting it'd be handed to her.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Check out this awesome interactive graph about voting patterns. Make sure you mouse over the blocks.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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That's a pretty awesome graph. You can really see the shift by age and education level as very strong overall trends, as well as race, of course (though Hispanic voters aren't separated out, which I'd be interested to see too, we're hearing so much about them.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I think there are a lot of Democratic women voters who are afraid that there won't be another viable woman candidate in their lifetimes. Hillary Clinton is going to be too old in 2016. I think Hillary Clinton losing may have become emblematic to them of their lifetimes of at the least perceived doors being closed on them because they were women.
I don't know how feasible this is, but if the Democratic party could give them hope that there will be a viable woman candidate for President in 2016, it would go a long way towards overcoming their...bitterness.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I think there are a lot of Democratic women voters who are afraid that there won't be another viable woman candidate in their lifetimes. Hillary Clinton is going to be too old in 2016. [quote]
In 2016, Hillary will be 69 -- 3 years younger than McCain is right now and the same age that Ronald Reagan was in the 1980 election.
[quote]I think Hillary Clinton losing may have become emblematic to them of their lifetimes of at the least perceived doors being closed on them because they were women.
I don't know how feasible this is, but if the Democratic party could give them hope that there will be a viable woman candidate for President in 2016, it would go a long way towards overcoming their...bitterness.
I wonder how those women would vote if Condoleeza Rice were the Republican Candidate in 2016.
There are currently several women state govenors and senators who are younger than Hillary who could make viable candidates in 2016. If one of them were given a high profile position in an Obama administration for which they got good press during the next 7 or 8 years, we could easily have a viable woman democratic candidate in 2016.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Rice won't run, and if she did, I think she'd likely lose pretty badly. It would be utterly impossible for her to disentangle herself from the foreign policy failures of the Bush White House. Especially considering her heavy involvement as NSA and SecState in those failures. Plus, she comes off as a fairly severe woman a lot of the time, and other than her service in Bush's White House, she has zero experience in politics, in government service, in actually running anything, etc. I think any halfway decent Democrat could probably take her out.
That said, there probably is something to the fact that women feel like Clinton is just the best chance they have. If Sebelius gets VP, she won't run in eight years, or at least I'd doubt it. I think she too would be too old. If they changed the law, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm would be a great choice, but she was born in Canada. Eight years from now I think there will be plenty of great female candidates for the post between the female governors and senators. Maybe Michelle Obama will want to throw her hat in the ring, since Presidential spouses are apparently now contenders. She's certainly smart enough and has a similar background to Barack's. She could probably run for an Illinois senate seat, maybe become governor, then run for the White House in her 60's and still be a decade younger than McCain is.
I'm not worried about finding capable viable women.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The matter isn't so much finding them, as demonstrating to the Clinton supporters that they exist. I think a lot of them are viewing Sen Clinton's run as a more isolated event than it really is. We're reaching a point where women have been in leadership roles in politics long enough that there going to be viable candidates coming out. I think the Democratic party could do itself so good by giving more exposure to these women.
edit:
Give it a month or two and they could come out with a commercial with several prominent women Dem politicians talking about what they wanted to be when they grew up (I wanted to be a leader so that I could...) and then seguing into how Barack Obama is a great choice for advancing what they are trying to do, etc.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I haven't seen any Obama ads yet, but we're being carpetbombed by McCain ads, especially during the Stanely Cup finals over the last two weeks, which couldn't have been cheap.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: I wonder how those women would vote if Condoleeza Rice were the Republican Candidate in 2016.
Either Rice or the Republican party would have to change position on abortion for that to happen.
I just did a google check to verify my memory about her position on abortion and came up with this lifesite news report on an interview with Rice by the Washington Times (For several reasons, I generally avoid using lifesite as a verification source, but the Times article it refers to seems to be inaccessible)
quote:US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a candid interview with The Washington Times Friday expressed her position on abortion as “mildly pro-choice.”
Asked, “Are you pro-life? Are you pro-choice? What is your thought on abortion?”, Rice responded: “I believe if you go back to 2000, when I helped the president in the campaign, I said that I was, in effect, kind of Libertarian on this issue, and meaning by that that I have been concerned about a government role in this issue. I'm a strong proponent of parental choice, of parental notification. I'm a strong proponent of a ban on late-term abortion. These are all things that I think unite people and I think that that's where we should be. I've called myself at times mildly pro-choice.
There's more - and many people here would be OK with her positions. But it won't fly with the Republican party as a position for a presidential candidate.
Of course, she could always change her position. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened when someone is looking at a presidential bid - a phenomenon in *both* parties, as a matter of fact.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I kept hearing a bit of booing through the cheers whenever she mentioned Obama's name. Is that really necessary? What exactly did you think she was going to speak about? What possible use could that serve?
People confuse me sometimes.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
People always boo when their chosen candidate doesn't win. Do you really think if Obama lost none of his passionate supporters wouldn't have booed? No one wants the person they choose to lose. Especially with a campaign that lasted this long. Passions run deep and these were the most hardcore of Clinton supporters.
Posts: 796 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
From the sound of things, she had a pretty classy exit. I'll watch the speech later this weekend or on Monday.
quote:Hundreds of young supporters and volunteers were on hand to witness Hillary Clinton’s exit from the presidential race, but the crowd at her last campaign rally Saturday was dominated by the middle-aged white women who have been the most loyal element of her base.
As the crowd filed out into the 90-degree Washington afternoon, 63-year-old June Stevenson of Columbia, Maryland – who said she would be donating to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign that evening – added that the failure of Clinton’s presidential run felt personal: she and Clinton came from the same generation of women on the front lines of the feminist fights of the 1970s. “It will be another 10 years, 20 years, maybe more before we get another chance like this,” Stevenson said.
“There won’t be another chance like this one,” responded her friend Linda Cohen, pointing out that if a woman were elected president in the next decade or two, they were unlikely to be a Baby Boomer. “Our time has passed,” she said with a laugh.
Looks like you were right Squick, women do lament the lack of candidates.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Not only the superdelegates can change their minds, but also the so-called pledged delegates, according to the rules of the Democratic Party, are not legally bound to vote the way the primaries went. Every single delegate could change his mind, even on the first ballot in the convention. There will be nothing to take for granted when the votes are taken in the Dem convention.
The Dems have shot themselves in the foot so many times during this primary campaign, they have no feet left. The convention should be convened with everyone in wheelchairs.
Saying that hillary might possibly shenagle the democratic primary now is about as delusional as saying that Ron Paul was ever going to shenagle the republican primary ever. =)
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:“There won’t be another chance like this one,” responded her friend Linda Cohen, pointing out that if a woman were elected president in the next decade or two, they were unlikely to be a Baby Boomer.
Pardon me while I locate my violin. My generation will never elect a president.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Hillary's speech today was quite impressive, very classy. It made me wonder all over again how much truth there is in the idea that her "backstabber personality" has been manufactured wholly by her enemies and media.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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